Scandinavian Perspectives on History Culture, Historical Consciousness and Didactics of History Related to World War II

Helle Bjerg, Claudia Lenz, Erik Thorstensen (eds.) Historicizing the Uses of the Past The series is edited by Egon Flaig, Daniel Fulda, Petra Gehring, Friedrich Jaeger, Jörn Rüsen and Jürgen Straub. Helle Bjerg, Claudia Lenz, Erik Thorstensen (eds.) Historicizing the Uses of the Past Scandinavian Perspectives on History Culture, Historical Consciousness and Didactics of History Related to World War II This publication has been produced with support from The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities and NordForsk. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlat- ched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-3-8394-1325-8. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www. knowledgeunlatched.org. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommer- cial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To create an adaptation, translation, or derivative of the original work and for commercial use, further permission is required and can be obtained by contac- ting [email protected] Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. © 2011 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Inter- net at http://dnb.d-nb.de Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Proofread by: Müller Translations Typeset by: Erik Thorstensen Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-1325-4 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-1325-8 CONTENTS Introduction 7 I CASES OF NATIONAL HISTORY CULTURES Representations of Victims and Guilty in Public History. The Case of the Finnish Civil War in 1918 27 SIRKKA AHONEN The Holocaust as History Culture in Finland 45 TOM GULLBERG The Nazi Camps in the Norwegian Historical Culture 57 JON REITAN The Norwegian Fascist Monument at Stiklestad 1944-45 77 TOR EINAR FAGERLAND AND TROND RISTO NILSSEN The Holocaust and Memory Culture: the Case of Sweden 91 KRISTIAN GERNER Small and Moral Nations. Europe and the Emerging Politics of Memory 107 CECILIE FELICIA STOKHOLM BANKE II HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN HISTORY DIDACTICS Processing Time – On the Manifestations and Activations of Historical Consciousness 129 KLAS-GÖRAN KARLSSON German History Didactics: From Historical Consciousness to Historical Competencies – and Beyond? 145 ANDREAS KÖRBER Coping with Burdening History 165 BODO VON BORRIES III THE MEDIATION OF HISTORY IN PRACTICE Exhibiting the War. Approaches to World War II in Museums and Exhibitions 189 OLA SVEIN STUGU World War II at 24 Frames a Second – Scandinavian Examples 207 ULF ZANDER Historical Propaganda and New Popular Cultural Medial Expressions 227 ERIK THORSTENSEN The Culture of Memory in the “Grandchildren Generation” in Denmark 241 HELLE BJERG Strengthening Narrative Competence by Diversification of (Hi)stories 257 CLAUDIA LENZ How to Examine the (Self-)Reflective Effects of History Teaching 281 BODO VON BORRIES Contributors 303 Introduction HELLE BJERG, CLAUDIA LENZ, AND ERIK THORSTENSEN In 2010, the German invasion starting five years of occupation in Den- mark and Norway is being commemorated in a special way. 70 years after the events, only a few of the eye witnesses are still alive and the traumatic past is about to be transformed from “communicative” to “cultural” memory (Assmann 2004). 65 years after the end of World War II, a fourth generation is learning about the events in school, through media and, less and less, through the stories told in families. The different gen- erations communicating about the war have experienced different ways of telling – or silencing – stories about the war, as they have witnessed different commemorative cultures and political uses of this past. But even 65 years after the breakdown of German National Socialism and the liberation of the former occupied countries, this war is by no means fading away from public debate and media. “The war” is still capable of engaging people and mobilizing strong feelings. The ambition of this volume is to diagnose and position the history and commemoration cultures of the Scandinavian countries within broader tendencies and recent developments of the history culture of WWII in an international perspective. In order to do so, it is necessary to devote particular attention to the Holocaust-related commemoration and history culture. The articles in this volume dealing with the different national cases will show that the most significant changes in the national representations and interpretations of WWII during the last decades are in one way or another linked to the integration of the Holocaust into new national narratives and to new patterns of interpretation. In this field, a confusing variety of concepts has emerged, which partly seem to have synonymous, partly overlapping meanings, and 7 HELLE BJERG, CLAUDIA LENZ, AND ERIK THORSTENSEN which are not always used in coherent ways. Therefore, we would first of all like to clarify our use of some core concepts in this introduction – which does not, however, in every instance necessarily correspond with the ones chosen by the authors in this volume. The variety in uses of concepts mirrors, in effect, different backgrounds with regard to aca- demic disciplines and “schools”. To start with, the perhaps most confusing distinction in the field is the one between “collective memory”, “memory culture” and “history culture”. Some scholars doubt that such a thing as collective memory ex- ists, arguing that memory is a phenomenon linked to the individual ways of turning experiences into mental and emotional representations. Others interpret memory as a social and communicative process of attaching meaning to the past, mediated by cultural activities. Here the terms social memory and cultural memory indicate the activity of creating or constructing memories, whereas the term collective memory points to the fact that memories serve to construct group identities and cultural tradi- tions (see Erll/Nünning 2008). Memory culture is often used to describe the complete field of cultural representations and practices dealing with a specific past. Still, it seems more appropriate to reserve this term to all phenomena which are related to commemoration and coming to terms with the past, whereas history culture signifies the whole spectrum of ways the past is addressed and used in a society. In this volume, the diagnosis of history culture is addressed within the perspective of history didactics. This means inquiring how these developments with regard to the interpretations and uses of the history of WWII and the Holocaust raise new challenges and possibilities for history teaching. The main focus here lies on the question whether the open- ing up of monolithic national master narratives to incorporate grey zones, ambivalences and a more reflective attitude corresponds to new approaches to historical learning and teaching. These might include re- placing authoritative fact canons with the reflection about the ways the past has been interpreted and used at different times and in different con- texts, including one’s own contemporary situation. This perspective of history didactics, understood as a meta-perspective on learning and teaching history, is addressed throughout this volume, but especially in the second and third chapter. In order to specify the kind of questions to be raised and discussed within a mainly Scandinavian comparative framework throughout this volume, we shall start this introduction by providing a small glimpse of the history culture in Denmark and Norway respectively, represented by two recent films. We will then go on to summarize the primary ques- 8 INTRODUCTION tions of the volume and outline some of the general tendencies within the history culture of WWII and the Holocaust reflected within individual contributions. Finally, we will give a brief presentation linking each contribution to the shared perspectives. In 2008 and 2009, it seemed that the Scandinavian resistance hero had made his comeback. Two films, a Danish and a Norwegian produc- tion, were released, both of them dealing with the resistance against the German occupation of the respective country. But, even if both films played on well-known topics from national history cultures, they dealt with them in quite different ways and, consequently, provoked very different reactions in the Danish and Norwegian public. One could say that each film represents an antipodal landmark in the memory landscapes that have emerged during the more than six decades since the end of WWII. On the one hand, there is the Danish film Flammen og Citronen (Flame & Citron), released in 2008 and featuring two members of the Danish resistance movement who are shown as being responsible for the “liquidation” of people considered to be collaborators and to represent a danger for the activities of the resistance movement. Still, the narrative of the movie is not as clear-cut as the last sentence might indicate. The two heroes are portrayed as being under heavy nervous and physical strain, not only due to their brutal task, but also because they are drawn into intrigues within the resistance movement. They even suspect that they are being manipulated into killing innocents, thereby entering the grey area of virtually committing murder. The film leaves the question open whether personal animosities and power struggles within the resistance movement might have been the motives behind some of these “liquidations”.

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